2 days ago
The tightening of Canada's asylum laws was an inevitability
Michael Barutciski is a professor at York University's Glendon School of Public and International Affairs, as well as a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
The first substantive legislative initiative from Mark Carney's government, Bill C-2, has passed through first reading in the House of Commons.
Its short title, the Strong Borders Act, makes explicit the public messaging that underlies the sweeping and multifaceted legislative amendments being proposed. While the bill provides law enforcement with various powers regarding issues such as fentanyl and financial crime, it also addresses immigration-related irritants with the U.S.
Concerns have been raised that it includes measures which would restrict asylum claims. But the lax practices of recent years may have left Canadians unaware of the fundamental dilemmas concerning the country's asylum situation, and of the reality that changes to the system were inevitable.
The federal government is now proposing new measures that will ultimately make Canada less of an outlier compared to other Western democracies, and beyond the advocates defending the untenable status quo, it should be clear to most Canadians that the asylum system needs to be tightened. Bill C-2 signals that Ottawa is taking the issue seriously.
Monthly asylum claims in Canada remain unsustainably high, with nearly 11,000 new claims in April, mostly in Quebec and Ontario; these numbers also come before the summer months, when claims tend to peak.
These latest statistics reveal that many claimants are entering at official land border crossings under exceptions to the Safe Third Country Agreement (STCA), the responsibility-sharing treaty with the U.S. that is intended to prevent asylum shopping by obliging migrants to claim protection in the first country they enter. These exceptions will eventually need to be reconsidered.
At the same time, there are many migrants unlawfully present in Canada; a CIBC report suggests the number might be around one million people. Many more visas granted to temporary residents are set to expire soon, and many, including foreign students, may seek asylum in a desperate bid to prolong their stay.
The administrative tribunal that examines asylum claims, the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), is already overwhelmed by historic backlogs, and current trends suggest pressure will only increase.
Part 9 of Bill C-2 addresses an exception in the STCA that allowed asylum seekers to avoid being returned to the U.S. if they enter between official land border crossings and are not detected by Canadian authorities for 14 days.
It was an incoherent provision that contradicted the objectives of the STCA and mainly signalled that the authorities did not want to spend a prolonged period tracking down migrants. The bill will make asylum seekers who evade authorities for two weeks ineligible to make an asylum claim, and if it is safe to do so, they should generally be sent back to their home country.
Part 9 also makes migrants ineligible for asylum if these claims are made 'more than one year after the day of their entry.' This is the Carney government's initial response to the potential crisis that could emerge if even more visa overstayers try to prolong their stay through asylum.
Opinion: Canada has become an immigration irritant for the U.S.
Opinion: Trump's policies will send asylum seekers to Canada's border. What's our plan?
This is a reasonable response that partially harmonizes the Canadian system with the U.S. system. As controversial as this may seem to some, harmonization is the only way Western countries such as Canada will be able to bring migration under control.
Democratic governments are continuing to bleed support because they are unable to assuage populations that are justifiably anxious about uncontrolled migration; the Netherlands is just the latest example.
Whether the asylum-related provisions in Bill C-2 become the law of the land will ultimately show how serious the new Liberal government is in correcting immigration policy mistakes made by and acknowledged by the previous prime minister and then-immigration minister.
Yet it is one thing to amend laws to restore Canada's seriousness on the immigration file; it is another to actually enforce them. If Ottawa cannot incentivize the large population of overstayers to leave by themselves, it will need to enforce its own laws, potentially with large-scale removals of foreigners who are unlawfully present in Canada.
The government could propose a humane yet realistic carrot-and-stick approach involving financial aid to help migrants return home combined with future eligibility for legal residence if they do return.
Even assuming the government can resolve this dilemma, it will then have to propose new amendments to address the unmanageable backlogs that remain for the country's largest administrative tribunal.
Indeed, the gravity of the challenge is illustrated by the fact that the IRB had already seen both its operating budget and number of employees more than double between 2015 and 2023.
Deep reform of Canada's asylum law will have to come sooner rather than later. Bill C-2 is a solid start.
